


Fatality

by DjarinsRiduur



Series: Fatality [1]
Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Anxiety Attacks, Cussing, F/M, Panic Attacks, Penis In Vagina Sex, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-16 02:27:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29568876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DjarinsRiduur/pseuds/DjarinsRiduur
Summary: He knew that his mind needed time to heal, but with time came the memories he no longer wanted to have. Memories that brought nothing but pain. It made him the man he was, but there was something, someone within them that he had lost. Someone who he wanted back.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Reader
Series: Fatality [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2172372
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	Fatality

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Been awhile since I delved into Bucky as the Winter Soldier, but I was in my Bucky feels last night. So here’s the first part of his three part series! (Also posted on my Tumblr). Takes place post Endgame.

Most days he felt like he was choking on them, the memories that flooded back to him. They couldn’t have come one at a time, gradually. No, they had to come back in waves, forcing their way into his mind until he felt like his brain would split in two. He blamed it on the five years he was dusted, gone from this earth. Five years of having to catch up on the memories that were stored away in a locked box, but some would never completely return to him. He normally didn’t feel pain, the serum having prevented any of that, but this wasn’t physical.

The memories were a mental pain he couldn’t fight against, one he just had to endure at the end of the day. So, he did. He let the memories flash through his mind, one after the other, until he felt so overwhelmed, he wanted to scream. Somedays he did just that. Going outside in the wooded area in the cabin and shouting into the night air until his voice went hoarse. Sam didn’t question it, just allowed him to get the pain out, to get the emotions that threatened to drown him away from his mind.

After all what else do you do to fix a broken mind? A shattered mentality. What else is there but to let it heal itself?

In time it would, but the question still remained. How much time would it actually take until he could call himself a person again? Bucky supposed that was the fatality of living. Time would ravage you one way or another, but for him, it wasn’t the time that he lived that did it.

It was the time that he lost.

\------

" _You have to get out of here,” you shoved the gun into his hands._

_Except he remained where he stood, in that small unimportant apartment in the center of Washington, watching as you threw what you could into the small bag you brought. Several times this had happened. You met here, disobeyed the rules of where you came from, and gave into one another, because that’s what you both really wanted. Only now there would be no last time, no goodbye that could amount to what you felt for each other. Because that’s not how life worked in the end._

_“Come with me,” he said, staring at the weapon._

_"I can’t do that.”_

_He met your eyes again, wanting to say that you could. You would be safe with him, but even he knew it would only be a lie he told to gain five more minutes with you. To have one last time, one last goodbye rather than this rushed out exit that you both had to make. Life really had a way of kicking him in the face and giving him things that he would soon enough lose._

_“Will we see each other again?” He held hope in his voice and that’s what broke you in the end. There would be no again, no next time, just these last five minutes where you said all that you were able to say._

_"James...”_

The memory began to fade, and he tried to grasp onto it, keep it with him to learn about who this woman was, but it was too late. He had begun to enter reality once more. With a gasp he woke up feeling the sheen of sweat over his body, his hair sticking to his forehead. Dreams always made his body exert more energy than it should have, but those were always the nightmares. This one was different. This one didn’t feel like a nightmare in the normal sense; no torture happening. But this one was a different type of torture, a slow burning, agonizing pain that he once endured but forgot.

Just as he forgot everything else.

He tried his best to focus on the face of the person in his dream, kept it in his mind until he could figure out what to do with it. But a bang on the door shook him out of his own thoughts and forced him to remember that he had to be a person again. Sitting up he heard the old familiar clink of his dog tags hitting together, the sound a comfort from a time when he was nothing more than a typical soldier. Not one that could kill people with a metal hand. Just one that was thrown into a war far too large and far too violent for someone so young.

“And here I thought you died in your sleep. I got breakfast,” Sam said when he saw Bucky emerge from the bedroom. “You are way too quiet when you sleep. Anyone ever tell you that?”

He sat at the kitchen table after pouring a cup of black coffee. “Every time I sleep my body thinks I’m being put into cryo again. Why I’m so quiet.”

Bucky didn’t bother to see Sam’s face after he said it, already knowing that it was a look of sympathy. They hadn’t been back that long, but within that time he tried going to a therapist, hoping that it would help, but all it did was give him panic attacks in the office. The thing with him though is no one could see those attacks. A silent murderer is what he liked to call his mind. The flashes of old memories, one’s he didn’t think were his coming back to haunt him continuously.

“There’s pancakes.” Sam sat to eat his breakfast while Bucky stared into the coffee mug, the face of the woman in his dreams still as vivid as ever.

“I had a dream about a woman.” The words slipped out before he even thought about saying them. It caught Sam’s attention though.

“One from Hydra?”

He shook his head. “No, no she was...different.” The sound of her whispering his name came back to him, making the hair stand on the back of his neck, almost as if she was directly behind him.

“Maybe she was a spy.” Sam got up to put his plate in the sink. “Could she have worked with Hydra?”

“She didn’t work for Hydra. Someone else,” he replied.

This happened quite often. Bucky waking up from a memory and Sam helping him put the pieces together with questions. Helping him to try and fix some part of his mind and get it straight. Bucky was grateful for it, but with this one specific memory, it faded in and out. Almost as if Hydra had wiped it from his mind over and over again until there was nothing but fragments of it left.

“Maybe she was a prisoner. Could have shared a cell with you or something.” Sam waited for him to come back to reality, the dazed look in his eyes telling him that Bucky was lost in his own mind again. This happened often, but eventually he’d come back to life.

“She was an agent.” He took a sip of the now cold coffee.

“For SHIELD?” Sam asked, returning to his chair, willing to keep helping until Bucky gained the whole memory back. “Was she a field agent? Or someone who just worked there?”

Bucky ran his hand over his face as he searched through his mind, feeling the mental headache coming on already. This is why he stayed away from the dark corners of his mind, choosing to push things away rather than focus on them. It was because of things like this. Memories he only had pieces to, bothering him until he had the full story, until he held the entire memory in his hands.

He wanted to know who that woman was more than anything. How he knew her, why he woke up feeling a sharp pain in his chest. Why he felt like he loved her at one point in his life, even as the Winter Soldier. There was a joke that Bucky made once to his old therapist. The Winter Soldier’s memories would always be his memories. Same brain just two different personalities. He supposed calling himself Jekyll and Hyde is what got him kicked out of the office and asked not to return.

Sam thought it was funny when he told him.

“Yeah, for SHIELD. But she wasn’t just a random agent.” He huffed out a breath feeling his mind turn to mush. “I don’t have any more after that.”

“Well, if you can remember what year it happened, Sharon might be able to get you an old file on former SHIELD agents.” Sam got up to grab the shield he’d been training with for over a month. The red and blue colors still making it hard to see for Bucky, images of his old life coming back to him.

“1974,” he said, instantly, surprising himself. Maybe he did have more of the memory than he thought he did.

Sam nodded strapping the shield to his arm. “She’s in the city today. I’d say go see what she can find out for you.”

Bucky dumped the rest of the coffee into the sink, grabbing a single pancake and heading to his room to grab his jacket and keys. He hadn’t been in the city for a week, not after people might still be looking for him, but he still remembered how to vanish in a crowd full of people. All the years of training to be invisible helped him now to stay that way, because a lot of people still didn’t believe the Winter Soldier was a hero. Didn’t matter if he fought in a war to save the planet. Twice.

“Get some eggs on the way back man!” Sam shouted after him, already having started training.

He took note of it, even though he knew taking mental notes never went very well for him. Most likely he’d forget that he was supposed to even go to the store let alone what he was meant to get. Sam usually forced him to write it down on a piece of paper to remember, but this time he happened to be in a rush. If the information he had on Sharon was correct, he could find her in an old apartment that used to belong to Steve. An old safe house of SHIELD that never happened to be recorded anywhere.

Swinging his leg over the motorcycle he started up the engine and did his best to recall the address of where to go. Times where he had something to focus on, something to do is what kept him sane in the end. It gave him the chance to set aside the memories and instead remain in the present day, living. Times where he didn’t have anything to do, he would wander around the wooded area, walking until the sun went down, until his mind let him out of whatever trap it created for him again.

It’s why he had begun to train with Sam. To keep the attack of his mind at bay for as long as he could.

The wind hit his face, but he didn’t care. It felt cold which was good in his mind. He could remember Steve one time saying he hated the cold, dreaded when it would snow, because it reminded him of when he had to freeze slowly in the ice. Brought back a time he would rather have forgotten. Whereas Bucky liked the cold. The more freezing, the better. It kept him alert, kept him awake, because the cold shocked his brain into thinking he was being put to sleep again. So, in a reverse effect, the brain woke up, preparing to fight against cryo.

People milled around on the streets going about their day, oblivious to the fact that the Winter Soldier was walking among them. Better that they never know he even existed, but there would be no running from his legacy. He could taste the bitterness of that word. All he would ever be known for now is that trained killer rather than just Bucky Barnes. He would take being forever known as Captain America’s best friend over what he had been forced to be.

He shoved his hands in his pockets to hide the glint of dark metal that made his arm and did his best to melt into the crowd, but something stopped him. Kept him from even moving an inch. He swore he was dreaming, could feel his heart begin to race at just the sight in front of him, but this had to be real. Had to be a part of reality somehow, because if it wasn’t then it would mean he’d lost his mind.

A glimpse of her face in the alleyway is all he caught, but it was enough for him to head in that direction. His heart sped up as another memory flashed through his head. One of him chasing her down an alley just like this, her laughter echoing in his mind until he felt that ache in his chest again. He watched her figure walk away, leading him towards a run-down building and he called out, trying to get her attention, but nothing happened.

“Hey!” he shouted, running into the building, but finding nobody there except empty old desks that looked to be rotting. The rancid smell of mold hit his nose letting him know how long this building had gone empty for.

“Hello?” Nobody except him stood in the room.

He could still hear her laugh ringing in his ears, the fait sound of her shouting _come catch me Winter Soldier_ , but her figure was nowhere to be found. His breath came in short pants, his chest tightening with every passing second. The fear that he truly was going insane came back, filled his body with an overwhelming sense of dread. He leaned against the wall, taking in large breaths that stung on the way in as he tried to gain control of his mind.

But the memories wouldn’t stop. The dark abyss of his mind had been cracked open and now it would have its fun torturing him. Spots showed in his visions, the panic filling his veins until that became all he knew. He needed to get out of there, needed to force himself to move, but he was stuck in place, unable to even shout for help. A humorless thought came to him as he stumbled towards a chair to sit down.

Who would want to help him?

“Fuck,” he gasped, taking another breath. He tried to focus on anything other than that feeling, but then he closed his eyes.

_“They told me you were a myth,” you whispered. “That you were a ghost story.”_

_His human hand cupped your cheek bringing your lips closer to his. “They told me the same thing about you.”_

_He marveled at the smile that graced your face, the way it lit up your eyes. “Maybe we can be ghosts together,” you breathed against his skin._

“Stop it!” he shouted into the empty room, the ache in his chest becoming an agonizing pain. “Stop it.”

He clasped his head in his hands, taking in deep breaths as much as he could and trying his best to focus on something other than the pain. Except it overtook his whole body. Made even his muscles ache. A feeling he hadn’t had in decades. He could now recall the feeling of her lips against his, the sensations of something akin to a lost love forever burned into his mind.

He’d loved her.

Bucky didn’t think he could even know what love is, but he knew this feeling, knew how painful it was. He not only loved her, but he grieved for her as well. But what would he have to grieve if she never-

She never died.

His head shot up as he scrambled out of the chair, his lungs filling with air and the panic slowly leaving his body. It would still remain for several more hours, but at least now he had something to focus on, something to distract himself with. Bucky remembered deaths. That’s one of the first things that came back to him when he got away from Hydra; all the way back to the death of his mother. He remembered them like they happened yesterday.

But he couldn’t remember hers. Which means she never died, Hydra never recorded her death, and that also means she was different. Maybe she was like him. Clearing his head, the best he could, he took in his surroundings. If the person he saw really was her then she led him here for a reason, and that means there was information he needed hidden within these walls. He opened a door on the other side of the room to a set of stairs and took them two at a time. Thankfully for his sake there was labels on the outside of each door, telling him exactly what resided behind them.

_Intel_. Bucky opened the door slowly, pulling the gun he always kept tucked in the back of his jeans, out. The lights didn’t work, which means he only had a few hours of daylight to work by as he saw the sun begin to shift in the sky already. How long had he been in this building for? It may as well have been hours at this point; he’d never be able to tell.

The memories of her gave him nothing to go by; no name to search for, but something told him he would know when he found it.

Old boxes lay on the floor with files spilled out of it, almost as if someone had gone through them before. Grabbing the first box he saw that the SHIELD label printed on it, realizing that he had ended up in an old building that was once occupied by them. Maybe this is where Sharon got all her intel from after all. The year 2012 was written on the side letting him know that they must have kept old unused files here. Hopefully all the way back to when SHIELD first started.

Scouring the shelves, he picked out dates, years, anything that would be close to what he needed. And after passing by seven rows of shelves he came up empty handed. The sun would be going down soon, spurring him to search faster, hoping to find anything. A small hint, a piece, he would take anything at this point to help him figure out the rest of this memory. The rest of a past he couldn’t hold onto.

Turning to the last shelf he found it. 1974 was printed on the side by what looked like a typewriter, as well as the name of a place he didn’t wish to remember. Hydra. Bucky held his breath as he carried the box to an empty table, holding out hope that she wasn’t in fact a part of that wretched place. That she wasn’t someone like him who they turned into their own personal puppet.

The first file he opened held a picture of her and it shoved all the air right out of his lungs. It was like looking at an old piece of his life, holding it his hands where he could turn it over and admire it. The yellowed paper told him that it was older than he thought, maybe from the seventies, but he couldn’t officially tell. There didn’t seem to be a name anywhere, no way for him to call her something other than that word he remembered saying. Doll. He used to say it back in the forties, and for some reason she brought that out, gave him an old part of himself in the darkest period of his life.

**Asset transferred to base in Washington.**

So that’s how he knew her. Back in the seventies Hydra had been trying to infiltrate whatever parts of SHIELD they could and other than the place where Steve came from, there was only the base in Washington. It had been run by Howard Stark at one point, but then given over to Alexander Pierce. Which meant that Hydra ended up digging their corrupted claws into the place after all. He just hoped that she hadn’t been apart of all of that.

**Asset sent to be terminated.**

The ache returned, only this time it shocked its way into his system rendering him immobile again. _Terminated_. _Terminated_. No matter how many times he read it, he still couldn’t comprehend that it was real. That she had died long before Hydra bothered to wake him up again. He flipped through the last file they had on her, scanning the papers in the fading light of the sun. There had to be something left of her, something that would allow him to know who she used to be. If he couldn’t have her then he would at least try to have a memory of her.

He felt his heart drop at the last page, his throat beginning to constrict as the unshed tears stung his eyes.

**Asset termination: failure due to Hydra capture. Ghost pronounced dead.**

“No. No, no, no.” He roughly wiped away the tear that fell and shut the file, stuffing it into his jacket. None of it could be true. It couldn’t be. Because if it was, then that meant she had survived. Hydra would have made sure of it.

_“Maybe we can be ghosts together.”_

Her voice rang in his ears, bringing another wave of pain to his chest and tears to his eyes. If he was right, if the file he read happened to be correct after all, then she was like him. A replication of the serum ran through her veins just as it did his, and if Hydra had gotten a hold of her then that meant they turned her into their own personal weapon. That meant they turned her into someone just like him.

\------

Sam called his name when he came back, but Bucky didn’t have energy to respond. He had remembered to stop by a store though, and left the carton of eggs on the counter as he headed towards his room. Everything he learned left him feeling like he had been shot multiple times. He didn’t know how he could handle the fact that this woman, someone he loved at one point, may be alive and in the hands of the place he escaped. Except Hydra no longer existed, so if she had been in their grasp, she was most likely dead anyways.

He collapsed onto the bed after throwing his jacket and shirt into the chair, the picture of her now on his nightstand. After the day he endured, he didn’t want to do anything else but sleep. Only as he closed his eyes, allowing the exhaustion to overtake him, he was thrown back into the chaos of his mind.

_A gasp left your lips as you sunk down onto him, his nails biting into your skin only adding to the sensation. Bucky reveled in the sight of the expression on your face. Eyebrows furrowed in pleasure, head tilted back, and lips parting as you got used to the feeling of him inside you again. After all it had been a while since this happened and you needed time to adjust._

_He waited for you to let him know you were okay and you did with a smile and a roll of your hips that had him grunting out a curse word. Bucky wasn’t sure how you did it, brought himself out of the Winter Soldier personality, but you did it. And now he couldn’t get enough. His thumb found your clit easily, pressing on it to hear those soft little moans and whimpers just for him. This is what he would have forever seared into his mind. The sight of you above him, a dazed look in your eyes as you found pleasure in the man he wanted to be._

_“Oh-shit,” you breathed out when he bucked his hips into yours, hitting the perfect angle._

_He smiled as you placed your hands on his chest to keep from collapsing onto him. “So beautiful for me doll.”_

_A grin flashed across your lips before he was propping his feet on the mattress, trusting up into you until you were crying out his name. The blinding pleasure left you unable to do anything but take it. The groans fell from his lips as you clenched around him, your release coming fast and threatening to break both of you. His grip on your hips tightened as he continued to rub at your clit, desperately wanting to see you shatter around him. He kissed you as best he could, but it was sloppy and rushed, the passion, the need, all of it spurring your movements._

_"Cum for me doll,” he managed to grunt out, slamming his hips against you and watching as you broke in two. A cry of his name left your lips, your back arching as you squeezed your eyes shut._

_He continued to thrust into you, prolonging it as much as he could before he was spilling into you, shouting out your name and burying himself completely within your walls. The warmth of him filling you made you let out a small moan, the aftershocks still running across your skin. It left you in a haze of pleasure until you were unable discern anything but him, his taste, sound, smell. All of him consuming you like a vicious storm and you happily fell into it._

_You kissed him, slipping your tongue into his mouth and leaving his mind reeling as always. This is what he would hold onto when you both eventually left the apartment. When you went back to being used and abused by the people who called you theirs. His hand gripped the back of your neck keeping your lips to his because he couldn’t bear letting you go. Not after what just happened._

_"I love you James,” you breathed out, meeting the blue eyes that held so much love for you it was overflowing into everything he did._

_He smiled, running a thumb across your bottom lip. “I love you Y/N.”_

Bucky woke with a start gasping as he panted from the dream. Only one name continuously being said on his lips, the memory finally having come back to him fully. The one thing he wanted back was finally his and now he just needed to keep it safe, keep it protected, because he couldn’t do the same for you.

“Y/N,” he whispered to himself, the feeling of her name familiar on his tongue.

He had been right earlier. Whoever Y/N was. He had loved her at one point; loved her with everything in him. And now he didn’t know if that ever faded. Time ravaged everything and it seemed that it got to you as well, but he wouldn’t allow time to ruin you completely. It could have him as it’s prey, but it wasn’t allowed to have you.

Time would not touch the woman he loved.


End file.
